Apple has a weird problem. Way back in 2008 when it launched the iPhone 3G it just about nailed the spec of a great smartphone.
The iPhone may have grown, acquired an extra camera and sped up in the years since, but its hardware and software user interfaces remain essentially unchanged. Each new model therefore feels incremental …

Re: Whatever.

Unfortunately some of us have work to do so need something with more than just telephony. My phone tells me when my next meeting is, where it will be and then guides me to it in places I've never been before. I can take photos and send them to customers and I can respond to my emails from anywhere which although may not make me more productive than you, it does make me look quite a bit more efficient while you have to travel back from Napa Valley before even being aware of the mail. I can read the latest news or learn new skills on the commute to work, making it easier to keep my skills up to date while also leaving more of my own time for my hobbies or family.

I can also make phone calls and have found the reception to be at least as good as my old Nokia. Even ones with fake aerials like yours...

Re: Whatever.

If you could live with your phone 'without being able to make or receive calls' then you never needed a phone, you just needed something to 'do work on' presumably email, facebook and angry birds which many people seem to think is what constitutes Getting Things Done these days.

If, however Being Contactable is more important than having an awkward mobile SSH client (at least JuiceSSH has relieved some of the pain since its arrival on the scene, nice app), email and other basic officey tasks in your pocket then you primarily need a phone.

I could happily just go with my old Nokia 6230 if I had to, as the work I need to do certainly needs a shedload more than a phone in my pocket and Being Contactable is far more important than anything else on my S4, nice as the extra stuff certainly is.

Re: Whatever.

"thanks for accepting the fact that your iFolly is a toy!"

Yours may be a toy, mine is a business tool used every day for much more than phone calls. Just because your job doesn't require you to travel or be productive on the move doesn't mean that nobody has a job that does. It does, however, imply that your company and colleagues can happily do without your input. You may want to look into that...

@ Obviously!

Re: Whatever.

who the hell are you? you come into every smartphone thread and start banging on about your vintage nokia and how it still works. you've spouted the same crap about it working in "dead zones" about 5 times that i've seen. shut the hell up mate, nobody cares.

Re: Whatever.

You forget that using your phone to do menial tasks like emailing and surfing actually save the planet by producing less carbon than turning on your PC at home. But then you probably drives a 5L pickup truck to buy your milk and newspaper.....

Re: Whatever.

Good for you. I take it you have a large bag to fit in your alarm clock, watch, street map, train time table, news paper, text messaging device, diary, address book, camera, notebook, walkman and all the other things I've forgotten.

"Nokia released this ages ago. Maybe because your sooo stuck on your legacy tech you fail to reliase what is actually happening in the mobile market today?"

weird, I Googled it and despite finding a bunch of people moaning that white balance was off when using their flash on a Nokia I found no mention of Nokia having a dual colour flash for white balance. Perhaps you could help us out with a model number or link to where Nokia used this technology before Apple?

Quite a bland and unemotional review.

Re: Whatever.

Read Jake's earlier postings on various threads. He has been everywhere, done everything, worn EVERY tee shirt, met everyone, advised on world issues, solved ever problem. No surprised his Nokia is still working but if the thread was about Nokia, I suspect his vintage model would be a Mototola...

Someone listed his life's work elsewhere, gathered from his previous posts. Interesting reading. But he never seems to follow up his opening salvos when challenged.

@AC16:49 (was: Re: Whatever.)

Almost perfect

It is very difficult to perfect something that works almost to perfection. It is no wonder that it is upgraded incrementally. All well and good stuffing it full of mediocre features like some phones I could mention, but the over all package is what counts with an operating system that disappears into the background. The balance and Khama of the phone can only be bettered when new technology and hardware is developed and not gimmicky add ons............

iPhone 5S marketing

Equally tiresome...

Are the endless number articles saying how the biggest problem is the changes are incremental. We have had a good 20 years of highly incremental changes to notebook computers and we have been able to read about our tech yet haven't had to suffer endless articles published for each new model telling us how the improvements are only incremental. There has always been category changing breakthroughs followed by incremental change. Why should it be any different for phone tech ? I suggest the problem is more to do with the growth of an online tech news cycle shorter than a gold-fish's memory leading to tech websites who get tetchy because a company isn't working for them to deliver buzz-worthy new product categories, on a yearly basis, feeding their livelihoods. Fancy that, Apple are working to improve their own business through improving the products they already have and working to their own timetable when it comes to products which might define new product categories. What a bunch of failures eh Reg ? 64 bit computing in a phone, 120 FPS video, biometric security, pah. WE WANT MORE NEWS ARSE-HOLES AND WE'LL BEAT ON YOU UNTIL WE GET IT.

Re: Equally tiresome...

Any new phone is going to be incremental - you could argue the first iPhone was incremental but what do you expect. What do people really expect on their new phone - let's see it's significantly faster, got a M7 co-pro, 64-bit (a first), updated OS, better camera, better flash, fingerprint sensor - but it already was a great phone - so what else?

I'm sure some people would like their phones like the Homer Simpson designed car and someone would probably consider a geiger counter as a useful thing to build in - but for the vast majority of people what else does it need?

Re: Equally tiresome...

Re: Equally tiresome...

Re: Equally tiresome...

I dunno about Geiger counters, but there are some extra bits of hardware that can be clipped onto an iDevice - or indeed some Android devices.

High quality microphones have been available for some iDevices since the iPod, and someone has started a Kickstarter campaign for a 3D scanner that clips onto iPads (or Android devices that support USB Host mode).

A bolt-on Geiger counter? Why not? It would would log its readings and use the phones GPS and radios to allow the mission HQ to build up a map... though it might be a job for a drone.

Re: Equally tiresome...

"What else does it need?"

NFC would be a nice addition. I've had that on Android for a while now. It's not "mega", but it's something that could prove quite useful in the not too distant future. "Backing" from Apple could give the standard the sort of boost it needs.

Re: Equally tiresome...

I completely agree, it's not any different for phone tech.

But it is different for Apple products.

Apple products don't sell purely (or, it could be argued, even mainly) because of performance, features and functionality - they also sell based on hype. It gets harder and harder to create that hype, even amongst the hardcore fanbois, when there is less and less noticable difference between each new version.

Re: Equally tiresome...

Given that Apple hasn't added NFC yet, the odds that they ever will continue to drop. Especially given that there isn't much momentum behind the standard even on the phones that have it. I've never seen a NFC payment terminal, I've never been anywhere that used NFC tags for anything (or if they did they didn't make it known well enough for me to know about it, so if my phone had NFC I wouldn't know to try it) You see QR codes all over the place, you see places here and there where it is possible to pay for stuff with your phone.

If NFC was so great, given that so many Android phones now have it, you'd see massive uptake despite Apple not having it. Even if Apple got behind it, I don't think it would help much. Maybe they believe this also and don't want to back a failure.

What problems does NFC solve that only NFC is a solution for, and Bluetooth or Wifi are not solutions for?

Re: Equally tiresome...

Reviewer: Gee... We saw the box and touched a 5C

Incremental?

The only vaguely interesting new thing about the Galaxy S 4 is that it has temperature and humidity sensors (or was it barometer?). Personally I find these to be of very questionable usefulness but I can imagine myself using them every once in a while, not for any very practical purpose, but mostly just because I could.

That's an incremental change.

Apple has added a fingerprint scanner which will likely be used dozens of times PER DAY by its millions of owners, saving them the time and tedium of entering PIN codes each time. The technology to do this is completely different from any previous fingerprint scanner that I'm aware of. So let's see, we have a completely new and novel piece of hardware that will be used frequently and provides very material benefits to its users and this is being slagged off as "incremental."

I'm not sure what Apple would have to add to an iPhone to make you think it's not incremental.

I'm with you and I'm not an iphone user

If the thing works well (and is accepted as being secure), then I want a fingerprint scanner on my next phone.

AAll manner of clever stuff could be added. E.g. upload a hash of your fingerprint onto the cloud with the rest of your data and then.. oh I dunno. You touch your friends scanner and it adds your contact details to their phone. You touch the scanner, and it syncs your entire iphone onto it? Your child touches it, and they get launched into a safe/non-microtransaction/educational game only account etc etc.

Re: Incremental?

Putting a thermometer on a phone that spends most of it's time in a pocket or itself gets warm when in use - yeah really useful. As for a barometer - yes it can be used to tell changes in pressure / altitude - but for most people it is of little use. Barometers need to be calibrated against a known altitude to be accurate (for altitude) - this is often done manually or in conjunction with GPS. But... GPS itself can calculate altitude / vertical position - not as accurately as it can do your horizontal position - but probably accurately enough for most uses. If you are one of those people who needs more accuracy (pilot, climbers, mountain guides etc.) I doubt you would rely on the device built into your smartphone.

So barometer - pretty useless. Thermometer - useless. What else?

Fingerprint sensor is genuinely useful - I read half of people do not even set a code on their phones = no security. Instantly you make it easy and give them no reason no to. Plus fingerprint is more secure than a 4 digit PIN - people can guess / know / see your PIN and gain access to your device - so a fingerprint is more secure.